Storm View

A Humorous Noir Science Fiction Tale Where Our Hero Tries to Get His Life Back Together.

Released: February 20th, 2016

Pages: 94

Artie Snell has the easy life on the space station Storm View. He’s a hard-working loan-shark with a distinct advantage: an indestructible body.

That is until he crosses paths with a crime boss who’s worked out how to kill him. Then an ex-girlfriend leaves the daughter he never knew he had with him for safekeeping. Suddenly he’s charged with keeping her safe and trying to save his own life.

With people trying to kill him at every turn will he save his daughter and get his life back to normal again?

Genesis of Storm View

Storm View was the first novella I published. The inspiration for Storm View, in particular the character of Artie Snell, came while working my regular job. One day while answering emails my mind started wandered and came up with the character name of “Artie Snell”. It sounded to me like a name you’d hear in a limerick, and I started rhyming in my head:

There once was a man named Artie Snell,Who looked a lot like an artillery shell.

That was about as far as I got before being interrupted by a telephone call. By the time I got back to thinking about it I couldn’t remember how I had wanted to start the next line. Eventually I started thinking about how someone would come to be shaped like an artillery shell. Over time the more I thought about the name he became a mutated alien character from an unknown star system.

Once I had a mutant alien character I began looking through my collection of story notes and ideas, and cobbled together the basic outline of what eventually became Storm View.

Some of the other character names came from car number plates. Vu Dogg and Ula Gai were both named after translating number plates into their letter equivalents.

Artie is my favourite character that I’ve written a story for and I’d like to see him in further adventures.

Alternate Covers

Regular visitors to this site may have noticed a change to the cover of Storm View. I decided to change the cover back to my original concept after some A/B testing indicated this one was liked more than the black and white version.

Personally I was a fan of the stark black and white design, but it seems I was in the minority! So, gladly bending to the will of the public I changed the cover to the original design showing Storm View orbiting Arachnos. That said, I may change it back again at some point in the future. I’m fickle that way. 🙂

This one is the best representation of my vision of what the space station Storm View looks like though: the two crisscrossing platforms mounted onto a small moon, protected by electro-shielding.

Storm View Space Station

Fun Fact:

The blue planet behind the gas giant Arachnos is the ocean planet Osiris.